I watched a red light dance through the cross-shaped windows on the front doors and land shakily on Seth’s leg.
Seth followed Priest’s gaze down to the red circle and blinked.
A moment later, a shot tore through the damp wooden doors and punctured Seth’s right thigh. He screamed in agony as he fell to the ground, clutching the profusely bleeding wound.
Priest moved quickly then, wrenching his hands off the wall, then absently pulling out the nails drilled through his palms as if they were splinters. The broken doors crashed open, Kodiak and Wrath storming inside with raised guns.
Billy froze at my side.
“Billy?” Priest asked over Seth’s pitiful wails as Wrath went to secure him. “Put down the knife, kid, yeah?”
He did no such thing, shaking so hard the knife pricked my dress and the skin beneath on my hip.
Priest took a step forward, but Billy held the knife up and pressed it against my belly in threat.
“Hey,” my man called, his voice suddenly soothing, soft, and liltingly Irish. “I once knew a man like Seth, who pretended to be a priest when he was really a monster. He did this to me when he thought I was bad,” he indicated the scars gleaming through his torn shirt. The blade was still in his belly, and he moved gingerly around it but didn’t make a move to pull it out. “He told me, ‘A worthless person, a wicked man, goes about with crooked speech, winks with his eyes, signals with his feet, points with his finger, with perverted heart devises evil, continually sowing discord; therefore calamity will come upon him suddenly; in a moment he will be broken beyond healing.’ Do you know which Bible verse that is?”
A vibrating moment passed then Billy nodded his head minutely. “Proverbs 6:12-15. It was one of the Prophet’s favourites.”
A shadow passed over Priest’s face, and he fisted his wounded hands so tightly that blood rushed between his knuckles to wet the floor. “I’m not surprised. It was a favourite of my tormentor too. He tried to break me beyond healing, Billy, but look at me? I defied that man and his God, yet here I stand. You can do the same, trust me. Sometimes evil men use God as an excuse to do evil themselves. No one is going to strike you down.”
Billie shook so hard his teeth rattled, huge tears rolling down his face as he debated with his demons. Finally, he looked up at me, and whispered, “If he’s right, then my mum was killed for no reason.”
My heart broke for him, tears pooling in my own eyes. It was impossible not to draw parallels with the boy Priest had been so long ago, abused by the church, completely lost and alone. “Seth wasn’t right in the head, Billy. I think you know that. Let us help you, okay?”
His thin lower lip trembled as he looked back at Priest. “You won’t hurt me?”
Priest held his huge, scarred hands open wide. “No, kid, I’m going to help you.”
A moment later, the knife clattered to the floor, and Priest surged forward to pick Billy up, checking him efficiently for wounds before passing him off with a murmur to a waiting Kodiak.
“Get him outta here,” he grunted, already moving to me.
I sobbed the moment he reached me, the second his hands cupped my face and brought my forehead to his.
“Little Shadow,” he breathed into my face, his fragrance all around me, and God, it felt like coming home after a nightmare. “Mo cuishle.”
I was sobbing so hard, my entire body was shaking, throwing my cut open back into agony, but I couldn’t stop.
He was there.
The man everyone thought was a harbinger of doom who was really, always and in so many complicated ways, my saviour.
“P-Priest,” I called again and again as if I could bind us together eternally with the sound of his chosen name.
He kissed me hard to stem the flow of words, his lips on mine settling me enough that I stopped trembling.
“Hold on,” he ordered as he pulled away to cut my arms out of the ropes.
I hissed as the hemp slid across my raw skin, but Priest was back, holding me carefully against his left side so he didn’t touch my torn back.
“Mine, mine, mine,” he chanted like a pledge and a reminder, like his ownership of me was a great gift and responsibility.
“Yours, yours, yours,” I repeated.
He winced as I shifted and pressed into the knife still sticking out of his side. “Priest! You need to take that out.”
“Was worried about blood loss. It’s not nicked anythin’ dangerous, Bea, don’t worry.”
“Still.” I moved my hand over the cold grip and shot him a questioning glance.
He inclined his head.
I pulled the blade from his flesh with a faint sucking sound that sent shivers down my skin. Immediately, blood seeped through his hoodie, drenching the fabric from chest to belly.